G.I.
Joe Vs. Cobra and Physics! (AKA
the storytelling that caused shitloads of kids to scream out
"What the fuck was that")

G.I.
Joeis
one of the greatest American cartoons ever made. Right behind
Batman - The Animated Series (fyi, I don't consider the
Family Guy or the Simpsons "cartoons", they
are "art"). What made G.I. Joe so cut-ass rugged
is its great characters (on both the good and bad guys' sides),
cool toy tie ins (I myself had well over 90 action figures and
around 25 pimping Joe and Cobra vehicles), and sweet storylines
that were as epic to me back when I was 8 as the Harry Potter
phenomenon is to the satanic youths of today's world.

Take for instance the first animated
Joe tale, G.I. Joe - A Real American Hero (AKA The
Saga of the M.A.S.S. Device). It was 5 episodes long (revolutionary
back in the early 80s)! That's like 100 minutes of high quality
animated smack! It was spread out over the course
of a week so that kids could gizz their pants each day at school
just waiting to see what kind of krazy hijinks Scarlett, Snake
Eyes and Duke would get themselves into next. It was pure genius!
Kids were hooked on Joe and Cobra like crack babies to hash!
Another 5-part animated special and two seasons of half hour
episodes followed... and sadly that was the end of an era. G.I.
Joe had been decommissioned and millions of kids were heartbroken.
(We here at therossman.com deny all existence of the waste
of celluloid known as G.I. Joe the Movie. It was not what
the original scriptors and animators wanted to do and was only
meant to launch the retarded toy line known as "Cobra-La."
It destroyed the plot that had been carefully set up over the
past 85 episodes so completely that kids felt gypped, cheated
and pissed on... but I digress)

So,
it was with fond memories that I picked up a copy of the original
Joe mini-series on VHS at a Blockbuster a while ago. But since
then it has been sitting on top of my TV. You see, I've had some
incredible childhood memories blow up in my face as I tried to
relive them in recent years. Nothing is as perfect as you remember
it to be from your salad days (according to my thesaurus that
means "youth"). So, I was afraid that G.I. Joe
would suffer the same fate, and as such I wasn't willing to chance
fucking up such fond memories of running to my friend's house
(he had a big screen TV)
and having his psycho mom bake us burnt brownies and finger Jell-O
as we experienced the battle of the M.A.S.S. Device firsthand
and picked which vehicles and weapons were out favorites (my
personal fave being that awesome jetpack that the Joes had but
that they never used enough of).

But then one afternoon I got bored and
decided to risk my Joe and Transformer filled reminiscences.
I popped the tape in my VCR and sat down for a few hours of childish
escapism. What I witnessed brought a tear to my eye. It was everything
that I remembered! Everything... and then some. The "some"
that I am referring to are the parts of the plot that are so
utterly and completely INSANE that even the writer of Major
League 2 would have thought it best to leave out or fix had
he taken a crack at the script.

Yes, everything was as I remembered
it, but when I first watched this show I didn't have as much
smarts as I do now... and some of the physics and lines that
are used throughout the movie are really really retarded. Now,
if there was just one or two or three goofs or mess ups in the
whole thing, I'd just chalk that up to this being a relatively
low budget picture and the fact that the writers are human. But
I compiled a 5 page, handwritten list of all the things that
truly confused the shit out of me as I watched G.I. Joe -
A Real American Hero...

I'll tackle each issue one at a time,
but first I want to remind everybody what the whole story was
about (since I'll only cover the discombobulated themes in a
list form).

It all starts out with Cobra and
Destro (mostly Destro) making a molecular transference
machine (the M.A.S.S. Device) that can teleport matter great
distances and apparently destroy whole cities. Cobra wants to
use this fancy doo-hickey to rule the world, but they need 3
catalytic elements to run it. And those elements are RARE. G.I.
Joe catches the matter transference bug too, and they get some
crazy doctor living in New England to help them build a M.A.S.S.
Device to combat Cobra, the enemy's. Then it gets hairy. Both
forces (Joe and Cobra) race each other to the rare catalytic
elements in order to power (or in Cobra's case, repower)
their fancy electronics. Lots of battles and sacrifices are made...
except not so much the sacrifices part. In the end the day is
saved by Cobra's infighting and Duke's horniness for a freaky-talking
slave girl. Then everybody gets ready for G.I. Joe the mini-series
2: the Revenge of Cobra.

You remember it now, don't you? If not, then
you probably never saw it and shouldn't even be on this page.
So piss off.

Anyway, here's the list of zany-kookiness
that resides in G.I. Joe - A Real American Hero in order
of appearance:

1:
Okay, so why do those lasers sound like bullets? I never really
did all that well in chemistry and physics and Spanish class,
but I didn't think that you needed gunpowder to make a laser
work.

2:
Either Scarlett is a genius of Tom Cruise-caliber when it comes
to flying an F-14, or she's a total fucking nutcase. During her
introduction she flew that plane 4 feet above the ground
right above her superior officer and the founders of the Joe
team! If they hadn't ducked (and they only did so with .83 seconds
to spare) they'd have been just another bug on that cunt's windshield!

3:
I'm already confused about Cobra's financial situation. I thought
that they had an assload of money behind them. I mean, they do
all have matching uniforms (and when I had to buy my matching
uniform at Little Caesar's it cost me an arm and a leg... and
that one didn't come with a gun) and a huge hidden temple.
So why do their HISS Tanks and motorcycles blow up with one hit
from a laser-bullet? Is their entire outer casing just one big
fuel tank? No matter where the Joes hit a tank it explodes! (I
won't even comment on the fact that both the Joe and Cobra specially
trained armies can't hit the silhouette of a man standing 10
feet in front of them).

4: Did General Flagg really want the Joe team
to blow up the launching facility's fuel supply just to prove
they could get in? Rocket fuel can't be so cheap as to just piss
it away on a training exercise.

5:
An army of 2 dozen Cobra shock troopers teleport into the satellite
facility with the element of surprise on their side, not to mention
a few tanks, but then they actually retreat from Duke, Scarlett,
Stalker, Snake Eyes and an old fat man in a uniform two sizes
too small for him. Cobra Commander obviously does not know how
to shop around for good mercs.

6:
So that small satellite with the delicate antenna bristling it
can launch itself into orbit without a space shuttle or a rocket?
Why don't we build more of those.
Save us some astronaut clock time too.

7:
Why did Cobra and Destro even need the satellite to transmit
teleportations? All they needed to transfer the satellite to
their base in the first place was a tracking beacon. And they
still need the tracking beacon even after they have the
satellite.

8:
There was actually a scientist back in 1983 that specialized
in "molecular transference?" It's been 20 years, why
haven't they mastered it yet so I don't have to drive my lazy
ass to the grocery store today? Just teleport me some Beanie-Weanies
and I won't even have to get out of bed.

9: Why do the Joe helicopter cockpits open well
past the propeller blades? Do they have an ejection seat too?

10: I
take it that the Joe team doesn't undergo regular eye exams.
They can't tell from 2 feet away that Major Bludd is wearing
an eye patch underneath his mask when he dresses up as Dr. Vandermeer?

11:
Mr. Wizard never let us in on this little secret: Dried out firewood
is some of the most explosive material on the planet!
Never hide behind it.

12: Okay, so Cobra had to retreat from the Joes
after their ruse was discovered. That's understandable. But why
in the hell did they leave the scientist for the Joes to save?
If they had to keep him that close to the battlefield (they must
have had their reasons), shouldn't they have shot him in the
head or something before they turned tail? That's just sloppy.

13:
Now here's the big one. Why the fuckity-doo-dah did this "brilliant"
mind use "3 rare catalytic elements" to power
the fucking machine? Why not plutonium or energon cubes? Something
you could at least swing by the army surplus store and pick up
a few packs of. And how would he have known that those "3
rare catalytic elements" actually worked to the desired
effect when nobody could have really known of their existence
in the first place?

14: I can understand the radioactive crystals (and
to a lesser extent the magnetic meteorite) being able to power
something as potent as the M.A.S.S. Device, but please tell me
how "heavy water" can do anything more than jack or
shit. And how does that thin tube of glass contain the radiation
anyway?

15:
Duke is a prisoner of Cobra and by means of the slave device
on his head he has to do whatever they want him to do. But how
much direct control over Duke's "motor reflexes" could
Destro truly have had with just a simple joystick controller?
Hell, even Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II
had 5-6 buttons... Well, apparently a lot of control.
Those backflips, flying kicks and spins show the product of years
and years of wasted youth at the arcade mastering Frogger
and Asteroids.